JENA, GERMANY—Court news service reports that an international team of researchers has discovered stone tools between two and 1.8 million years old in the Ewass Oldupa in Tanzania, the western part of the Oldupai Gorge, a 28-mile-long canyon known for its hominin fossils. Recovered from layers of stratified sediment, the artifacts are the oldest stone tools ever found in the throat. Tools include pebble and pebble cores, sharp-edged scales, and polyhedral pebbles. Fossil layers of wildlife, pigs, hippos, panthers, lions, hyenas, primates, reptiles and birds were also discovered, along with evidence of habitat changes over the 200,000-year period. Habitats include river and lake systems, fern meadows, forests, palm trees, dry steppes, and natural burn tests. The recurrence of Oldowan tools in these layers suggests that hominins moved in and out of the area during periods of volcanic activity and as the environment changed. “We see that we have a lot of flexibility and versatility even as ecosystems change,” said team member Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “I think that’s partly the beginning of our own genre, and partly that’s our legacy.” Read the original academic article on this research at Communications on Nature. To read about an 800,000-year-old Olduvai bone tip, go to “The Bone Collector”.